My Two Cents
Afternoon, folks! Hope you all had a lovely weekend.
We’ve got some new disc reviews for you to enjoy today...
I’ve taken a look at Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes (2009) on 4K Ultra HD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. It’s a nice (if modest) image upgrade on the format that fans of the film especially should appreciate. HDR gives the proceedings a nice boost.
Also, Dennis has taken a look at David Lynch’s The Elephant Man, which is now available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection. Sounds like it’s a very worthy upgrade, mastered from the new StudioCanal 4K transfer. And for those of you wondering, the “missing” fade from the StudioCanal 4K is also missing here. But do keep in mind that Lynch approved the remaster, so it’s possible he made the change himself (meaning it might not be an error).
Now then, we’ve got more reviews coming over the next few days. Two are already to go for tomorrow and more should follow. So stay tuned for that. [Read on here...]
All right Bits readers, we’ve got a pretty significant news update for you today...
We’ve been tracking many of these titles, but a few of the 4K catalog titles we’re going to talk about today are breaking news, thanks to our old friends over at Media Play News.
They’ve just issued the September 2020 Digital edition of their magazine, which features an extensive look at the recent surge of 4K Ultra HD catalog releases. The publication’s editor, Stephanie Prange (who, full disclosure, I’ve known for many years), wrote a great longform piece for the issue called 4K Ultra HD: Into the Vaults about the process of preparing classic catalog films for release on the format.
Not only is it informative (and I should note that I was among the people interviewed therein), it includes some great news about forthcoming titles. [Read on here...]
We’re starting today with another new disc review...
Dennis has taken a look at Elliot Nugent’s The Cat and the Canary (1939), starring Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard, on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber Studio Classics. The film is now available.
In announcement news today, Lionsgate has just officially set Schitt’s Creek: The Complete Collection for release on DVD only on 11/10, hot off the series’ recent Emmy Awards sweep. The set includes all 6 seasons of the series, along with deleted scenes, bloopers, Inside Schitt’s Creek and Behind the Episode segments, additional featurettes, and the A Schitt’s Creek Farewell documentary. I know what you’re all going to ask: No, there is unfortunately no word of a Blu-ray release at this time. In any case, you can see the DVD cover artwork above left. [Read on here...]
All right, we’ve got some pretty significant announcement news to cover here at The Bits today...
But first, I’ve posted my thoughts on Warner Bros. Home Entertainment’s new 4K Ultra HD remaster of Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. The disc streets today and it’s pretty solid (though it’s not quite up to the level of some of the other recent Kubrick 4K remasters simply because of the nature of the film itself). You can find that here.
And more Blu-ray and 4K reviews are forthcoming.
Now then... the big news this morning is that Paramount has officially announced the 4K Ultra HD release of Beverly Hills Cop on 12/1. A remastered Blu-ray came out earlier this year, and of course the film is already available digitally in 4K.
But that’s not all: The studio is also releasing Coming to America on 4K Ultra HD in both regular and Steelbook packaging, along with a remastered Blu-ray, that same day. This is tied to their upcoming sequel film, Coming 2 America, which is still tentatively due to arrive in theaters in December. [Read on here...]
We’ll be back later today, but we just wanted to check in early this morning with a quick bit of announcement news that broke over the weekend...
FUNimation has set finally Katsuhiro Otomo’s landmark anime Akira (1988) for release on 4K Ultra HD on 12/22. We’ve known the title was coming for a while now (it returns to theaters here in the U.S. for a limited run on 9/24), but we finally have the official confirmation of the remastered disc release.
The title is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com via this link and you can see the cover artwork at left and also below.
Apparently, it’s already been released on 4K disc in Japan and there’s a bit of concern that too much DNR may have been used by the Japanese animation studio to clean the image (the title is distributed there by Bandai Namco).
But we’ll have to see what it looks like when it finally arrives on disc here in the States. [Read on here...]